2. Nearly as frequent as egeiro, and on the whole more con- spicuous, are the verb anistemi and its noun anastasis. The noun is translated " resurrection." The verb denotes to rise up or raise one up from the supineness of death to the vigour of life. Peter turned to the body of Tabitha and said, " Kise up." She opened her eyes, saw Peter, sat up, " and he gave her his hand, and raised her up." Jesus commanded the ruler's daughter to awaken, " and straightway the damsel rose up " (Acts ix. 40, 41 ; Mark v. 41, 42).
] Sir Walter Raleigh.
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3. The words of these two stems are sometimes used inter- changeably, and in variant readings one is often displaced by the other. Eesurrection of the dead is frequently mentioned, but resurrection from the dead still more frequently. In the first of these expressions dead persons are represented as rising to life, in the second, one is represented as passing out of the class of dead persons into another class. Perhaps we have here nothing more than two differing aspects of the same fact.
4. Whatever exceptional or unusual forms of expression there may be in the recorded teachings of Jesus and His immediate followers, the ordinary presentation is not that of buried bodies rising up from their graves, or from Hades, but that of a person awakening from unconsciousness, rising up from the powerlessness of death to the activity of life.
Twilight and sunrise,
Burden and heat of day, Sunset and twilight —
So passeth life away. Back in my Mother's arms
Lay this tired clod, Till a fresh sunrise
Wake me — with God.
II.
The Eesurrection of Jesus.
1. The Eesurrection of Jesus is, above all else, a display of power. He who is our strength moves out of the bonds wherewith the grave had bound Him ; He shatters the gates of brass, and bursts the bars of iron in sunder. God, by raising Jesus Christ from the dead, has overcome death, and opened the door of everlasting life — opened the door. There is an uprush of pent energy ; there is an eruption of might. And barriers yield and break, and doors are flung open, and a passage has been forced, and human life is carried forward as by an irresistible flood past its ancient limits. It moves out into new fields, on untravelled levels ; through the doors that had so long forbidden its entry it presses onwards, driven by the power of its indwelling might.
424 THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY
2. That is the Eesurrection as St. Paul conceives it. A tremendous action must have taken place, and all the world is convulsed with the tumult and the shock. God has come upon the scene in the greatness of His name, " according to the working of the mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him on his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principalities, and powers, and might, and dominion ; and he hath put all things under his feet, and given him to be head over all things." The words tumble over one another in their anxiety to portray this immense and overwhelm- ing effort to which the Eternal has committed Himself.
3. This insistence on the energy put in action concentrates itself for St. Paul on the reality of the risen body of the Lord. There are critics who succeed in persuading themselves that St. Paul by his teaching of the spiritual resurrection of our own bodies in the famous chapter of the Corinthians, consciously avoids any reference to the Lord's actual body which is obviously at variance with the usual belief. And yet he is most certainly and emphatically rehearsing as his own the universal tradition of the Church. He is deliberately appealing at the very time to the fact that he is but saying for himself, what he received as the authorized account which every Christian held, by sheer necessity through being a Christian.
4. And so, again, the vividness of the Apostle's recognition of the humanity of the risen Christ alone explains the intensity and the immediacy of the activities which it sets in motion here on earth. The entire sum, he tells us, of our bodily conditions here in the flesh, experiences at once the result of our life hidden with Christ in God. For that which is hid there with God is one with our human realities here ; it tells upon them inevitably. It is in our bodies that we become so forcibly aware of the change that has been at work. " Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, evil desires, and passions ; put also away all anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking ; lie not one to another." Why ? Why is all this bound to happen ? Because you are putting on the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him, and this through identification with that body of Christ
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alive from the dead, in which there can be neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. So we are alive by the Spirit working with His splendid energy in our flesh ; the Spirit that is groaning and travailing, struggling and striving, helping our infirmity with His irresistible force, working for the adoption — i.e. the redemption — of our body !